Biographical Sketch of ARTHUR J. DICKEY - Henry County, Illinois

Arthur J. Dickey, a prominent agriculturist and stockman of Henry county, 
owns and operates a highly improved and valuable farm comprising three 
hundred and twenty acres of land on Section 27, Cornwall Township.  He is 
numbered among the worthy native sons of this county, his birth having 
occurred in Cornwall Township on the 23d of September, 1863.  A sketch of his 
parents, David T. and Eliza E. (Peterson) Dickey, appears on another page of 
this work.

Arthur J. Dickey passed his boyhood days on the home farm in Cornwall 
Township and after leaving the district school spent a year as a student in 
the Kewanee Public School.  Subsequently he pursued a commercial course in 
the Davenport Business College and after being graduated from that 
institution returned to the home farm, there remaining until he was married 
at the age of twenty-four years.  In 1889 he went to Clay County, Nebraska, 
with his young wife and there gave his attention to the operation of a rented 
farm for three years.  On the expiration of that period, in 1892, he returned 
to Henry County, Illinois, and in 1895 bought one hundred and sixty acres of 
his present farm from his father, paying seventy-two dollars an acre for the 
land.  In 1901 he purchased another quarter section at one hundred dollars 
an acre and at the end of five years sold the property for one hundred and 
fifty dollars an acre.  Two years later he again bought the place, paying one 
hundred and f!!ifty dollars an acre for the land and five hundred dollars for 
the improvements that had been made upon it.  His holdings therefore embrace 
three hundred and twenty acres on Section 27, Cornwall Township, and in 
recent years he has not only remodeled the buildings on the place but has 
added a number of others until today it is lacking in none of the 
improvements and conveniences of a model farm of the twentieth century.  In 
addition to cultivating the cereals best adapted to soil and climate, he also 
devotes considerable attention to the raising, feeding and shipping of stock 
and in both branches of his business has won a gratifying and well merited 
measure of success.

On The 4th of January, 1888, in Cornwall Township, Mr. Dickey was united in 
marriage to Miss Hattie B. Hayden, a native of that township and a daughter 
of Gideon and Mary E. (Casteel) Hayden.  The father still survives and now 
makes his home a Guide Rock, Nebraska, but the mother passed away when her 
daughter Hattie was only eight years of age.  Mr. and Mrs. Dickey have two 
children.  Leslie A., whose birth occurred during the sojourn of his parents 
in Nebraska, is now a young man of twenty.  After completing the prescribed 
course of study in the district school he entered the high school at Kewanee 
and was graduated therefrom in 1909.  Lela Grace, the daughter of our 
subject, is now a sophomore in the Kewanee High School.

Since age conferred upon him the right of franchise, Mr. Dickey has cast his 
ballot in support of the men and measures of the Republican Party, believing 
that its principles are most conducive to good government.  The cause of 
education has ever found in him a stalwart champion and he is at present 
serving as the capable incumbent in the office of school treasurer.  He and 
his family belong to the Liberty Cornwall Congregational Church; formerly 
called the Union Congregational Church of Cornwall, of which both he and his 
wife are charger members.  Mr. Dickey acts as trustee and also as 
superintendent of the Sunday school, having served in the latter capacity for 
about fifteen years.  Fraternally he is identified with the Modern Woodmen 
of America at Atkinson.  His entire life has been guided by the most 
honorable principles and his self-reliance and unfaltering industry, 
combined with his integrity, constitute the salient features in his 
prosperity.



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